Decoupled charge blasting can effectively reduce the peak pressure of hole wall and improve the blasting effect. Aiming at the issues associated with the explosive energy transferred into rock mass with different coupling medium, the deformation and failure characteristics of rock mass under explosion were analyzed theoretically with the consideration of strain rate effect of the rock mass, and the theoretical energy transfer efficiency of blasting with different coupling medium was obtained. Combined with the numerical simulations, the effects of rock mass properties, explosive categories and decoupled charge coefficient on the energy transfer efficiency of blasting with different coupling medium were studied. The results show that the energy transferred into rock mass from explosive of decoupling charge blasting is related to the coupling medium, the energy transfer efficiency of water coupling blasting is higher than that of air coupling blasting for the same charge structure and same blasting medium. When the charge structure and blasting rock mass are the same but the coupling medium is different, the energy transferred into the rock mass from explosive will be different, depending on blasting rock mass, explosive categories and decoupling charge coefficient. When blasting with the same decoupling charge coefficient but different coupling medium, the higher the rock mass strength, the greater the difference of energy transfer efficiency between different coupling medium. For blasting with the same rock mass properties and same charge structure, the difference of energy transfer efficiency between air coupling blasting and water coupling blasting increases with the increase of decoupling charge coefficient. For emulsion explosive exploding in siltstone, when the decoupling charge coefficient increases from 1.28 to 3.44, the energy transferred from water coupling blasting to surrounding rock mass increases from 1.45 to 6.52 times of air coupling blasting. The research results are of great reference significance for optimizing blasting design, improving explosion energy distribution and increasing the explosion energy utilization rate.